"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price ("The New York Times") described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years. Set in provincial France in the 1960s, it is the intensely carnal story--part shocking reality, part feverish dream --of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen--and pages that burn with a rare intensity.

This exquisite, resonant novel is a brilliant portrait of marriage by a contemporary American master. Even as he lingers over the lustrous surface of Viri and Nedra's marriage, James Salter makes us see the cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will in time mar it beyond repair. "An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time."

Touring Paris and provincial France in a handsome borrowed car, Philip Dean, Yale dropout, has an affair with a young French woman named Anne-Marie. Their liaison is imagined with candour and sensitivity by an unnamed narrator, whose fantasies become compellingly and hauntingly real. A Sport and A Pastime has been hailed as a watershed in American fiction of the 1960s: remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to blur the boundaries of reality and dreamlife, daytime and nightime, soul and flesh. 'A tour de force in erotic realism, a romantic cliffhanger, an opaline vision of Americans in France' New York Times 'Salter is the contemporary writer most admired and envied by other writers ...he can, when he wants, break your heart with a sentence' Washington Post

This is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose charmed life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, James Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it. This exquisite, resonant novel is a portrait of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness--and then felt compelled to destroy it.

Solo Faces contrasts a devotion to mountain climbing with the earthbound tugs of love and ordinary life... A beautifully composed book that will remind readers of Camus and Saint-Exupry. It exemplifies the purity it describes.

每一頓飯，都能造就一段小小的歷史。
《生活在餐桌》以飲食為基調，搭配作者感人的文筆，以一年365天為範圍，每日一篇小品文章，將飲食融合在文學、旅遊、歷史、哲學、音樂、趣聞、生活感懷等主題之下。
這本精緻的散文作品裡，作者每天信手拈來一篇優美的文章，看似隨筆記下，卻蘊含著無窮美好的經驗與故事，行文間甚至可以隱約聽見餐廳刀叉碰撞的清脆聲響、鍋具在爐火上的滋滋聲音，以及略帶嘈雜的人聲、腳步聲、美食的香味和甜點。
此外，書中還記錄許多名人軼事，例如作家莫泊桑在世時最痛恨艾菲爾鐵塔的醜陋，因此天天到鐵塔底下去吃午餐，免得見到它。另外還包含了詩人拜倫的餐點祕密、英國皇室待客的菜餚、狄更斯《小氣財神》（聖誕頌歌）裡的聖誕大餐介紹、「鐵達尼」沉船前的最後晚餐等。內容包羅萬象，知識豐富又有趣。
本書特別收錄：
●「鐵達尼」號沉船前的最後晚餐
●白宮有史以來招待賓客最豪華上等的晚宴
●巴爾札克對咖啡的狂熱
●如何決定宴客名單與拒絕往來戶
●美國知名幽默作家約翰‧厄文的肉丸家庭食譜
●維多利亞女王等名人晚宴實況
●狄更斯《小氣財神》裡的聖誕大餐介紹
【本書2009年曾以《生命饗宴》為書名出版精裝本】
本書特色
★　本書編排精確，插圖動人又美麗，能讓讀者過目不忘。
★ 本書內容趣味又吸引人，有深厚的歷史背景，也有精巧的趣味小知識（如何挑選客人、鹽的正確使用方法、小熊維尼的早餐、叉子的起源與流傳……）。不但有高度的實用性，也是席間對話主絕佳主題。
★ 本書可當成精美餽贈禮品。
名人推薦
★ 冬天的時候我們最需要飲食的養分，必須同時照顧到身體與心靈的營養。《生活在餐桌》正可以同時滿足我們的心靈與肉體。——美國公共廣播電台
★ 這本書真美，插圖迷人。內容的哲理智慧也叫人著迷，可以讓人徹夜閱讀，不知黑夜已盡。書中偶有食譜的介紹，內容又有歷史的氛圍，可以令讀者感受到作者索特致力追求的美好生活。本書實在是最佳的聖誕傑禮物。——紐約郵報
★　飲食書籍與美好人生的完美結合！這本書非常特別，又有美麗的插圖，可以讓讀者一再玩味。——西雅圖郵報
★ 這本雅致的生活一年記，其實就是對索特這位偉大作家的最高禮讚。也是對精緻的美食、智慧的言詞、雋永的對話所發出的最高禮讚。這本書是個閱讀樂園，也是高雅文化的指標，照顧著讀者，免遭世上風雨的吹襲。——洛杉磯時報
★ 高度的可讀性，豐富的知識性，優美的插圖，《生活在餐桌》將豐富的內容轉化成輕鬆的閱讀，這也正是這本書的最大魅力。值得放在枕邊，或送給每個朋友。——Bookpage
★ 這本精巧美麗的書，每日提供讀者一個故事。閱讀者可以細細品嘗當日的難忘內容，或者把全書狼吞虎嚥一次看完。不管怎麼讀，滋味永遠美好。——Eugene Weekly
★ 《生活在餐桌》其實是一本有關於高超品味生活的書，也是全世界都應該享受的美好生活。——作家Jeffery Meyers
★ 這本書講的是以食物來紀錄美好生活、美好時光、良朋密友。——南密西西比太陽先鋒報

In this brilliant book of recollection, one of America's finest writers re-creates people, places, and events spanning some fifty years, bringing to life an entire era through one man's sensibility. Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired.
captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his father's wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young man's passion for women.
After resigning from the Air Force, Salter begins a second life, becoming a writer in the New York of the 1960s. Soon films beckon. There are vivid portraits of actors, directors, and producers--Polanski, Robert Redford, and others. Here also, more important, are writers who were influential, some by their character, like Irwin Shaw, others because of their taste and knowledge.
Ultimately
is an illumination of what it is to be a man, and what it means to become a writer.
Only once in a long while--Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory or Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa--does a memoir of such extraordinary clarity and power appear. Unconventional in form,
is a stunning achievement by the writer The Washington Post Book World said "inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever" --a rare and unforgettable book.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James Salter's

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital - each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace. Two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy; an ambitious young screenwriter unexpectedly discovers the true meaning of art and glory; a ruder, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific accident - night is falling, and she must face her destiny alone. These stories confirm James Salter as one of the finest writers of our time.

From the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay—amateur chefs and perfect hosts—here is a charming, beautifully illustrated tour de table: a food lover's companion that, with an entry for each day of the year, takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year's Eve. Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors' own memories of successes and catastrophes. For instance: • The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night • Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others • The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini • How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party—and whom not to • John Irving's family recipe for meatballs; Balzac's love of coffee • The greatest dinner ever given at the White House • Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m. • How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchen Sophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. "The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"


BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James Salter's All That Is.

在线阅读本书
Captain Cleve Connell arrives in Korea with a single goal: to become an ace, one of that elite fraternity of jet pilots who have downed five MIGs. But as his fellow airmen rack up kill after kill - sometimes under dubious circumstances - Cleve’s luck runs bad. Other pilots question his guts. Cleve comes to question himself. And then in one icy instant 40,000 feet above the Yalu River, his luck changes forever. Filled with courage and despair, eerie beauty and corrosive rivalry, James Salter’s luminous first novel is a landmark masterpiece in the literature of war.